Although all our mandates are with specific clients with specific issues being addressed, the content of our deliverables is often of more general interest. Following are engineering reports we have made generic and available online:
Specifying for Maximum Value (Slide Show)
Our engineering consulting mandates draw heavily on value engineering, using techniques advocated by the Society of American Value Engineers (SAVE), to support large, complex technical purchasing decisions. This slide show is about that omnipresent value orientation.
Avoiding Unsafe Laboratory Design Practices
Scientific laboratories are equipped with fume hoods in order to improve the level of safety of people conducting experiments with products that would represent a threat to the health, and possibly the life, of someone using the products in some unprotected way. Working in a laboratory is a high-risk activity, and there are a number of things that can make that activity categorically unsafe.
Laboratory Ventilation Control
Various laboratory ventilation control schemes have been devised in efforts to save energy and at the same time maintain or improve worker safety levels. This paper examines some of these schemes with a view to helping a system designer deal with the often confusing and conflicting array of information available from a number of sources, and then specify what is appropriate for a particular application.
Knowledge Base Sets Expert Systems Apart
The words "expert systems" and "artificial intelligence" (AI) have a mystique about them that is generally reserved for movie stars and miracles. This article is designed to strip away the magic veneer with an explanation of what expert systems really are and to indicate what commercial opportunities exist.
Intelligent Buildings Simply Explained
In the early l980s, trade magazines began running stories on "intelligent buildings." Publications concerned with mechanical systems did articles on automation systems making buildings more energy-efficient. Magazines serving the communications industry told how advanced telecommunications systems have made buildings more efficient and therefore more intelligent.
How Can Buildings Be Intelligent?
Those outside the construction industry often wonder how an assembly of inanimate building materials can be intelligent - even with people in it. Industry insiders, especially developers and owners, see buildings stuffed with the latest technology as being intelligent. Both are wrong and both are right, and this article will show that there is an elegant way of resolving the seeming paradox.
Smart Buildings
In the early l980s, trade magazines began running stories on "intelligent buildings." Publications concerned with mechanical systems did articles on automation systems making buildings more energy-efficient. Magazines serving the communications industry told how advanced telecommunications systems have made buildings more efficient and therefore more intelligent.
Top 5 Y2K Issues
This article reduced the Y2K scare to "Management's Top Five Y2K Issues." It's almost frightening how the approach to the Y2K problem is so applicable today with new technologies invading businesses so quickly it's hard to keep up.
